ZAPORIZHYA, Ukraine –
Russian troops have invaded the vital port of Odessa, Ukrainian authorities said on Tuesday, an apparent effort to disrupt supply lines and arms supplies, which were crucial to Kyiv’s defense.
Ukraine’s ability to stop a larger, better-armed Russian army surprised many observers who expected a much faster conflict. With the war already in its 11th week and Kyiv burying Russian forces and even organizing a counter-offensive, Ukraine’s foreign minister seems to suggest that the country may expand its goals beyond simply pushing Russia back to areas it or its allies held on the day. of Invasion on Feb. 24
One of the most dramatic examples of Ukraine’s ability to deny Russia easy victories is Mariupol, where Ukrainian fighters remain hidden in a steel plant, denying Russia’s full control of the city. The regiment, which is defending the plant, said on Tuesday that Russian warplanes continued to hit it.
In recent days, the United Nations and the Red Cross have organized a dramatic rescue of what some officials say are the last civilians trapped in the plant. But on Tuesday, two officials said about 100 were still believed to be in the complex’s underground tunnels. Others said it was impossible to confirm.
In another horrific example of the horrific casualties the war continues, Ukrainians said they found the bodies of 44 civilians in the rubble of a building in the northeast that was destroyed weeks ago.
The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday that Russian forces had fired seven missiles a day earlier from the air at Ukraine’s largest port, Odessa, hitting a shopping mall and warehouse. One person was killed and five were injured, the military said.
Images at night show a burning building and debris – including an abandoned tennis shoe – in a pile of devastation in the Black Sea city. At dawn, Mayor Gennady Trukhanov visited the warehouse and said it had “nothing to do with military infrastructure or military sites.”
Ukraine claims that at least some of the munitions used date back to the Soviet era, making them unreliable for targeting. But the Center for Defense Strategies, a Ukrainian think tank tracking the war, said Moscow had used some precision weapons against Odessa: Dagger or Dagger, hypersonic air-to-ground missiles.
Ukrainian, British and US officials warn that Russia is rapidly using up its stockpile of precision weapons and may fail to build more quickly, increasing the risk of using more inaccurate missiles as the conflict fades.
Since President Vladimir Putin’s forces failed to take Kyiv in the early days of the war, he said his focus was on the eastern industrial center of Donbass, but one general suggested that Moscow’s goals also included limiting Ukraine’s maritime access to both. Black and Azov Seas.
It will also give him part of the territory that will connect Russia with both the Crimean peninsula, which it seized in 2014, and Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova.
Even if it fails to tear Ukraine off the southern coast – and does not seem to have the strength to do so – ongoing missile strikes on Odessa reflect the city’s importance as a strategic center. The Russian military has repeatedly targeted the city’s airport, claiming to have destroyed several batches of Western weapons.
Odessa is also a major gateway for grain supplies, and its Russian blockade is already threatening global food supplies. In addition, the city is a cultural jewel, dear to both Ukrainians and Russians, and targeting it is symbolic.
In Mariupol, Russians also bombed the Azovstal steel plant, the Azov Regiment said, targeting the large complex 34 times in the past 24 hours. Attempts to storm the plant also continued, the statement said.
Meanwhile, Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of the city, calculated in a post on social networks that at least 100 civilians remain trapped at the plant’s complex. Donetsk Regional Governor Pavlo Kirilenko said the remaining civilians were people “whom the Russians did not choose” to evacuate.
The two officials did not say how they knew there were still civilians in the complex – the maze of tunnels and bunkers, located 11 square kilometers (4 square miles). Svyatoslav Palamar, deputy commander of the Azov Regiment, told the Associated Press that he could not confirm that there were any other civilians left. Mayor Vadim Boychenko also said there was no way to know.
As Russian forces struggle to gain ground in Donbass, military analysts suggest a coup in Odessa could fuel concerns about southwestern Ukraine, forcing Kyiv to deploy more forces there. This will withdraw them from the eastern front as Ukraine’s military conducts counter-offensives near the northeastern city of Kharkov to push the Russians back across the border.
Kharkiv and its environs have been under prolonged Russian attack since the beginning of the war. In recent weeks, ominous photos have witnessed the horrors of these battles with charred and mutilated bodies scattered across a street.
Dozens of bodies were found in a five-story building that collapsed in March in Izyum, about 120km (75 miles) from Kharkiv, Oleh Sinehubov, head of the regional administration, said on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, meanwhile, appears to be expressing growing confidence – and expanded goals – amid a halted Russian offensive.
“In the first months of the war, victory seemed to us to be a withdrawal of Russian forces from the positions they had taken before February 24 and payment for damage,” Dmitry Kuleba said in an interview with the Financial Times. “Now, if we are strong enough on the military front and win the battle for Donbass, which will be decisive for the next dynamics of the war, of course, the victory for us in this war will be the liberation of the rest of our territories. “
This seems to indicate that Ukraine wants to try to regain Crimea, as well as areas of Donbass occupied by Russia and its separatists.
But the comments appear to reflect more political ambition than the realities of the battlefield: many analysts acknowledge that while Russia is unable to make quick profits, the Ukrainian army is not strong enough to drive the Russians back.
Also Tuesday, the Ukrainian military warned that Russia could focus on the country’s chemical industry. The allegation was not immediately explained in the report. But Russian shelling has previously targeted oil depots and other industrial sites during the war.
In Washington, President Joe Biden on Monday signed a bipartisan measure to restart World War II-era Lend-Lease, which helped defeat Nazi Germany to support Kyiv and its allies in Eastern Europe.
Elsewhere on the diplomatic front, Western powers continued to rally around the militant government in Kyiv. German Foreign Minister Analena Burbock travels to the Kiev suburb of Bucha, where the bodies of civilians – some tied up, burned or shot at close range – were found after the withdrawal of Russian forces.
“We owe it to the victims not just to honor them here, but to hold the perpetrators accountable,” she said.
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Gambrell reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Jessica Fish in Bakhmut, David Keaton in Kyiv, Juras Karmanau in Lviv, Mstislav Chernov in Kharkiv, Lolita S. Baldor in Washington and AP officials around the world contributed to this report
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